Review: I Am Alive

G'day there guys and gals!

Being in development for four years, I Am Alive has finally made its appearance on the Live Arcade title list, and so far has made a decent impression on the gaming community.

While not standing out for its graphic content (Looking at least back to the original Xbox) what adds great depth into this game is its audio. The sounds of your environment, from the lonely echo of the wind and dust to the falling of rubble, each small sound adds character and emotion to the game, as does the voice actor for our protagonist voiced by Carlo Mestroni. During gameplay there will be some cheap scares and some cheap laughs along the way when joined with a little girl known as Mei but these come very rarely and sadly do not make up for the faults.

Gameplay can become quite frustrating; when climbing controls tend to stick and this can lead to many deaths, while during combat, the targeting system tends to go by the deadliest enemy and locks onto him, barely allowing any change to targets. When forcibly aiming down at an enemy far away with one in front of him, bullets or arrows will pass through this AI and kill the enemy targeted, leaving the other intact.
Hints can be ridiculously pointless, such as "HINT: You are going the wrong way" and "HINT: Your map can show you where your objective is. Press Y to open." Whereas they miss the more important facts such as what effects your ending score, such as morality choices, to become a cannibal or not ect ect. Sadly, many bugs has also been found, such as a loss of items during saves, the entire game freezing over an hour of gameplay and so on.
Lastly, while the Campaign's storyline is of decent quality (Also quite realistic future) the ending(s) were sloppy, rushed and bosses were ridiculously easy, even on survival mode.

While I Am Alive is a decent game to fill in the time, for a game that has taken 4 years to be produced, the wait was not worth it, nor the microsoft points. This game is for those who are looking for an easy challenge but definitely don't expect a sequel.

Out of 10 I gave I Am Alive an 5.5/10

Good points
+ Entertaining dialogue
+ Interesting mix of puzzle/horror

Bad points
- Dissapointing plot twists
- Graphics are sadly terrible
- Controls are quite sticky
- Bugs = game rage
- Hints are useless for beginners

I Am Alive is out now for download for 1200 Microsoft Points